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Sam Ursu's avatar

Thank you for yet another superbly comprehensive analysis.

A couple of comments:

1) Croatia has now also joined the banning of Ukrainian grain. Romania, meanwhile, has tentatively decided to do it as well but only due to extreme domestic political pressure (i.e. the US-puppet gov't is purely in favor of unlimited grain imports from Ukraine, but the populace is opposed).

2) Don't forget both Poland and Slovakia are going to have really consequential general elections soon, so a lot of the grandstanding going on is related to that.

3) Brazil's president also canceled a 1-on-1 with Zelensky in New York due to Zelensky acting like an ass, as usual.

4) The whole Artsakh situation is incredibly complex and difficult to understand precisely because there is a seemingly incomprehensible desire on the part of Yerevan to ditch Stepanakert once and for all despite the fact that they're all ethnic Armenians, members of the Armenian church, speak the same language, etc. Armenia is always a bit weird as well because more Armenians live abroad than in Armenia (and Artstakh) itself.

5) At this point, I believe that >50% of all the munitions being produced on the planet right now are in the Korean peninsula (both North and South combined), which is... NOT GOOD (for world peace).

6) A friend of mine from Western Europe just got back from Kiev (just went to visit a good friend), and the stories he told me were beyond surreal - just think "Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe.

There is a SERIOUSLY large number of people in Kiev who are now very, very rich and living it up to the max, with long lines at trendy restaurants and upscale grocery stores with hugely inflated prices, and the more expensive, the longer the line (because it's cool/trendy/upscale). Luxury cars are on every street. Everyone ignores the air raid sirens and anyway, they're turned off on the weekends to "let people sleep." In short, from Kiev (the city's) POV, it's "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL."

My buddy asked his (Ukrainian local) friend to take him somewhere to get a photo of some bomb or missile damage or some other kind of photographic "souvenir" of the war, and it was a hard task to fulfill. Eventually, my buddy got taken to an apartment building with obviously missile damage, and the Ukrainian friend openly admitted it was caused by an errant Ukrainian AD missile, not a Russian one. In other words, my friend couldn't find even a single Russian-damaged building to photograph in all of Kiev.

If you're in Kiev, it truly DOES appear like Ukraine is kicking Russia's ass, and life is good. Literally everyone remaining has a pipeline to foreign money, whether it's directly via corruption/nepotism or via channels like foreign NGOs (which are FLUSH with money), the UN, or online jobs where you can charge triple because you're Ukrainian (and thus hiring you is "helping the war effort" and something you can brag about on your corporate webpage). But the whole thing has a ghastly danse macabre feel to it.

No surprise then at all that Kiev residents think bombing Russian cities is a jolly affair.

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Lubica's avatar

If this “sampling of Ukrainian vs. Russian populations in the street” is true; it is really sad!

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